After almost a year of debate and planning, the Penn State Athletic Department revealed a new system for distributing student football tickets.
The changes will affect the 2008 Nittany Lion football season and will coordinate ticket allocations by class.
This new system is a result of planning that began almost immediately after student football tickets sold out in 59 minutes last June. Tonight, students will receive an e-mail detailing the new allocation process.
While ticketmaster.com will still process the sale, which will be first-come, first-served, there will a pre-registration period for students wishing to participate in the sale, said Greg Myford, associate athletic director of marketing and communication. Except for Fall 2008 incoming freshman and new transfer students, if a student does not pre-register during the period of May 27 to May 30, that student cannot buy tickets.
After pre-registering, seniors will buy tickets on June 16; juniors on June 17; sophomores on June 18; freshmen on June 19; and graduate students on June 20. This includes students from University Park and Commonwealth Campuses.
A little more than 21,000 student tickets -- the same amount as last year -- will be for sale, Myford said. The number of tickets allocated for each class reflects that class's enrollment at University Park, Myford said. For example, if the senior class at Penn State makes up 26 percent of the student population at University Park, 26 percent of the 21,000 student tickets will be allocated for the day seniors buy tickets, Myford said.
Which day students buy tickets depends on their total credits at the end of the Spring 2008 semester.
Myford said there are two exceptions for the number of tickets allocated for each class. Graduate students represent a high percentage of enrollment at University Park, but historically, the number of tickets sold to graduate students is much less than the actual number of graduate students. So the number of tickets allocated for graduate students will be the
number of tickets that graduate students bought last year.
The second exception is because the Commonwealth Campuses have a higher number of freshmen than University Park. The percent allocated for freshmen will reflect the freshmen at University Park.
Students at Commonwealth Campuses make up 13 percent of student ticket holders, Myford said.
The reason for the pre-registration period, Myford said, is because the athletic department needs to gauge exactly how many students intend to buy tickets. Students can register at any time during those four days.
Myford said the goal for the 2009 season is to have students' football tickets connected to their ID+ cards and maybe create a loyalty system based on the number of games a student has attended.
Input about the new system has come from letters, e-mails and sit-down meetings with student groups. Myford said he has even sat with students in HUB-Robeson Center to talk informally about ticket sales.
Tom Boroch, president of the Paternoville Coordination Committee, said he thinks the new system is a step in the right direction, but there's still problems surrounding scalping tickets that need work.
"The thing you really need to crack down on is scalping," Boroch said. "Getting rid of scalping helps the kids that want them the most to get them. Putting a voucher on an ID card would kill two birds with one stone."
Boroch said he also liked the idea of a loyalty points system, also something that the athletic department is hoping to use in the future.
Frank Keller, former University Park Undergraduate Association (UPUA) vice president, along with former UPUA President Hillary Lewis and College of Agriculture Representative Jack Vickrey, met with Myford several times to discuss the allocation process.
Keller said he does not think the new system will do much more than alleviate stress on the computer system when tickets go on sale.
Lewis said another plan that was discussed was having a 12-day window period before a game for a student to say whether or not he or she planned to go to the game. If the student did not plan to go, his or her ticket would go into a pool to be bought by students who were not able to purchase tickets.
"The other plans weren't all that realistic," Keller said. "They were just ideas that were tossed around in the meetings. They sound kind of confusing, don't they? I think that's why they didn't come to fruition."
This is the second time in the past year the university has changed -- or attempted to change -- the ticket allocation process.
Early last May, the athletic department announced it would sell tickets for the 2008 football season using an online lottery system on a first-come, first-served basis. Within hours of the announcement, students protested the change, and student leaders vowed to lobby administrators to rethink the plan. Less than 24 hours later after the initial announcement, the university reversed its decision.
George Khoury, Council of Commonwealth Student Governments (CCSG) president, said he met with Myford last week to discuss the ticket allocation process.
"The way the process is set up, everyone has an equal opportunity to obtain tickets, whether you're at University Park or any other campus," he said. "They never differentiate or segregate commonwealth tickets or UP tickets. If you're a student, you can get tickets."
Guido D'Elia, football communications and branding director, said the new system is fair.
"We've got a very unusual situation, but a great situation," he said. "This is a further refinement -- having it weighted to various classes."
